A City of Ghosts
by The Prettiest Frog in the Pond
Summary: A soldier patrolling the ruins of Ishbal after the battle comes across two survivors. OCs, Oneshot.


_Um. I own nothing, and I have no excuse. There are absolutely no canon characters in this at all and I wrote it at four in the morning. And I think it may be slightly AU. Hm._

_And I think I fixed the tenses now, thanks for pointing it out._

* * *

The soldier wanders down the road listlessly. The buildings on either side of him are in ruins, not a single house standing. He is not fighting for his country, nor for his freedom: he is fighting because he has nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, another nameless man signed up to fight for a cause he doesn't understand.

He turns a corner on another ruined street, and in his mind he can see the city as it was before; the heat thick and languid, lying in a haze on the streets, the buildings sun-bleached and bright, the scents of a thriving city hanging in the air, the light gleaming painfully brightly off the windows. It wasn't so very different from his hometown, really- this was a civil war, and the ghost-town he was walking through could well have been the city he was brought up in.

The battle is over, the city deserted after the alchemists were done with it, but he had been sent in anyway to kill any survivors. He had met none- the place was lifeless and empty. Ishbal is dead, he thinks, and I played my part in it.

From his right, he hears a baby's cry. He winces, afraid to look, not wanting to see what he had been so afraid he would find: a survivor.

Turning towards the source of the sound, he sees a tiny dark-haired, dark-skinned child, bawling in a makeshift cradle in the wreckage of a building. He takes a step towards it- but before he gets any closer, a girl scurries across the hot cobbles towards the child, sweeping it into her thin arms and crooning in a soft, hoarse voice to it.

"Hush, hush," she whispers, "Shhh, now. I know, you don't want to be alone, but I have to find food, okay? Shhh, shhh." she rocks the child gently, clutching it close to her bony frame.

He steps up beside her silently, and she looks up at the sudden intrusion, regarding him with frightened, mistrustful crimson eyes, clutching the child ever closer to her chest.

"Hey," he says, and flops to the floor to sit cross-legged beside her.

She says nothing, watching him warily.

"You were looking for food, right?" he digs through his pack for his rations and passes them to her. "It doesn't taste great, but it's edible."

She takes it from him, studies it, and then offers him the smallest of hesitant smiles. "Thanks."

He shrugs. "I'll get another pack when I head back to camp anyway."

She nods, and shifts round to settle beside him, baby still in her arms.

"Your baby?" he asks.

"She is now." replies the girl simply. "Parents are gone. I found her in the wreckage."

"Oh." he replies, because there is nothing else to be said.

They sit in silence for a moment.

"What's her name?" he asks.

"Harper," replies the girl, and she smiles again, tenderly, peering down at the quieted child.

"It's good of you to take care of her."

Another shrug. "Somebody has to. Everyone deserves a mother."

"Yeah."

And they were silent again.

"Shouldn't you have shot me by now?" she asks.

"Yeah." he nods.

"Why haven't you?"

And he shrugs again, because he doesn't really know why, and he doesn't really know why he's here or what he's doing, and he doesn't know why he hasn't shot her because he could and he should but he won't, because everyone deserves a mother and everyone deserves a life so that's what he'll give her.

"Thanks." she says, and she opens the pack, scrounging through it for the water flask. She unscrews the lid and holds it to the baby's mouth, letting the water trickle in.

"Don't babies need milk?" he asks.

"Yes, but if I can't find it, she can't have it."

"Oh." he says, and he pauses. "Can I hold her?" he asks, tentatively, because he is the enemy and for all he knows he could be the one who _caused_ this child to be orphaned and alone and he has no right to hold the baby and he knows it, he _knows_ it, and he waits for the expected sneer but it never comes.

"Okay," says the girl instead, and she holds out the child.

He takes the child- Harper, he reminds himself- in his arms and marvels at her, at the trust the girl has placed in him by giving her to him, at the fact that she is even still alive out here in this dead city. He smiles at her and watches her toothless mouth smile back, lash-rimmed red eyes blinking at him, tiny little hands clasping at the shawl she is wrapped in.

"Hello, Harper," he whispers, and he is surprised by the softness in his own voice. He notices that she is not plump and round like he thought all babies were, but thin. He supposes he should have expected it, but it surprises him nonetheless.

"She's beautiful," he murmurs softly to himself, and is almost surprised when the girl hums an affirmative back at him. He had forgotten she was there, too busy studying this tiny little survivor in his arms.

He eases the child back into the girl's arms and they sit together for a while longer in silence, watching the sun crawl across the sky and losing themselves in their own thoughts. As the hours pass, the girl feeds Harper and changes her, using a scrap of cloth that she has picked up from god knows where. He gives her his jacket and his gun, not explaining why. He doesn't need to anyway; she understands.

"Hey," he says, as he stands to leave, "If you live through this, come find me, okay? My name's Benjamin Grant. I live at thirty-two Willow Road in Tallinham, alright?"

She smiles. "Yeah," she says, and they both know that she won't come. "I will."

He nods, and then he turns away and wanders down an empty road, and in his mind the heat lies thick and languid in a haze upon the streets, and unspoilt buildings stand sun-bleached and bright, and the scents of a thriving city hang in the air as he walks away from a mother and a child, both of them lost in a city of ghosts.


End file.
